Chapter 8 #2
It has to be hard for Lane, who is busy holding a pig and probably unable to fully feel Copper’s tug, but he manages to keep up with me. I swear that man would let me lead him anywhere without a second of hesitation.
“You’re da best,” I whisper.
“No, I’m not carrying you too.”
“I wasn’t meaning that. Was I thinking it? Maybe. Maybe not. But mostly yes.”
Lane grins. “I knew you were.”
I push the door open. “Doorframe here. Watch your elbow.”
“Got it,” he says as he slips inside. The first room I find is rather empty, and I debate whether Ned would keep our information in his office or somewhere else.
My guess is somewhere with a computer to look us up.
How long before he finds out that Lane was a police officer—albeit not an active one?
I guess… it’s an easy enough place to look.
“Lane, I’m going to leave you in this room here. There’s a closet. It looks extremely unused. Like there’s not a place that doesn’t have a layer of dust. I know Brigs gets antsy when I’m not around, but he likes it when you sing to him. So just sing to him and he’ll be calm.”
“I’m not singing to your pig.”
“Then tell him a bedtime story! He likes The Three Little Pigs . But he likes it best if you modify it so the pigs win every time.”
The expression on Lane’s face tells me that he’s not going to do a single thing that I just suggested.
I just mentally wish them the absolute best of luck. I’m not sure I’d be leaving them like this if I felt like the group was planning on murdering us. But so far, they all seem pretty low-key—not really too focused on our deaths, and their ability to keep track of us is lackluster at best.
Closing my loves in the closet, I take a hasty look around the room to see if there’s anything I might need.
It mostly appears to be planting supplies, and I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with some fertilizer unless I can fling it in their faces like badass fuckers do in the movies with sand.
Deciding I’d rather not carry around a handful of fertilizer, I slip out into the empty hallway. I quickly make my way over to Ned’s room, which they thoughtlessly showed us when they led us in here twice already today.
I listen against the door for a moment, unsure if Ned is back inside.
I can hear people outside the building I’m in, but currently I can’t hear anyone inside.
I knock, and when no one calls out, I push the door open just a little and peek inside.
Seeing that it’s empty, I slip in and glance down at the doorknob to check whether there’s a way to lock it.
Not seeing anything, I hurry over to the desk, hoping our phones are just lying on top.
Of course they’re not, so I start on the first drawer.
Since we haven’t been here long, I can’t fathom they got buried, but I still do a brief lift through the junk in the drawer to make sure our stuff didn’t get shuffled under anything.
Not seeing anything, I move to the next drawer until I find myself at a locked one.
The lock on this one is a little more finicky than the one on the door I just unlocked, but it takes me no time at all.
At the top of the pile are our wallets, but I don’t see our phones. He probably took the wallets to look up our names and left the phones somewhere else. He really wouldn’t have much use for our phones since he can’t get in them without consulting us.
I grab the wallets, but when I do, I realize I’ve accidentally grabbed the edge of an envelope. Pulling it up, I see that it’s full of photographs.
Curiosity getting the best of me, I slide the pictures out, careful to keep them in order so when I put them back later, he doesn’t realize I messed with them.
The first one is a woman who is lying on the ground, wrists handcuffed together.
In the next picture, she’s bloody and her face is covered in red and purple bruises.
I’m not sure I even want to flip to the next picture.
I hesitate and slide it up just enough that I can see her splayed out on the floor, blood pooled beneath her.
My stomach tightens as I quickly slide the photo back behind the other.
Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she just looked that way from the abuse she’d endured. I examine the first photo for a long moment, but she’s definitely not in the same room Lane and I were held in, so I don’t feel like this was a victim of Ned’s that he’d taken pictures of to enjoy at a later date.
I really feel doubtful that these guys did this and Ned kept the photographs as trophies. But if it was someone he cared about… why would he keep them here?
I flip the pictures over and discover there’s writing on the back of the very last photograph that says: “I warned you. Do I need to warn you again?”
I hurriedly slide the pictures back into the spot I’d found them. Then I decide that maybe I shouldn’t take the wallets. Yes, it’d fucking suck to lose our wallets, but if he sees that they’re gone, then we could be in a whole lot of trouble.
Anxious that if they find out Lane has ties with the police, they’ll panic and want to make sure he can never speak again, I pull out his ID.
And then I take out a credit card from my wallet in case we need some money to get the hell out of here.
Ned can have my ID. He’s going to see that I’ve had one too many run-ins with the police and gather nothing else.
And he basically already knows who Cal and Antonio are.
Slipping both cards into my pocket, I close the drawer and have to use the paper clips to relock it since I don’t have the key to do so. But before I can get up, I hear someone outside the door.
If they’re coming in here, I really only have one place to hide, and it’s a cupboard that is definitely not meant for a normal-sized human.
There’s absolutely no way I’ll fit in it with how small it is, and it’s foolish to even try, but I have absolutely no other option.
I mean… really, who would even fit in this cupboard?
A hobbit? Maybe if they squeezed and shoved and twisted a bit, they’d fit, but definitely not me…
Okay… maybe I kind of fit… and maybe I even have a bit of legroom, but that’s just because it’s one of those weird things where it looks really small from the outside but from the inside it’s actually huge.
Fucking hell. I fit too well.
“So… what are we doing with those two?” I hear Emma ask.
A voice I recognize as Ned’s responds, “I don’t know yet. I grabbed their wallets to see who they are. They might have ties to Antonio’s family as well, for all I know. Hell, she could be trying to fuck with us.”
“Why would she? We have nothing she wants.”
“That she knows of,” Ned says. “She thinks we really are trying to move in on this shit. Elena has no idea that we’re only trying to string Leonard and his men along.”
“So… you handed her son over to Leonard? Do you think that’s a good idea? The moment she finds out you were involved in that… it’s going to be a fucking shit show. She might kill you before Leonard ever gets to touch you.”
Handed her son over to them? What the hell does she mean?
Antonio? Didn’t Antonio, Cal, and Grayson just drop some drugs off or do some kind of deal or something?
Obviously, we knew something was up with it for them to send Cal and Antonio and not their own guys, but I’d hoped it was a “Something is up with it” because they wanted free labor from a guy who clearly knows what he’s doing.
But I really didn’t assume that he’d be over here trying to trade off Antonio… what exactly does that solve?
“So… let’s see who these guys are,” Emma says.
“The yappy one doesn’t seem to have much on him.”
Obviously, he’s talking about Cal.
“Looks like he has records with the juvenile court. Can you read what they were for?”
Ned responds, “No. I can’t see anything else on him. The other one doesn’t have a license. I guess that makes sense if he can’t drive. Only money in here… why’s it folded so weird?”
“It’s so he can feel what the bills are,” Emma says.
“Huh. Guess he really is blind.”
“You thought he was joking?”
“Hell if I know. And the third one… Looks like he was in the military. I guess that explains why he’s a bodyguard now and good at fighting.”
“So? I mean… might as well let them go, right?” Emma asks.
“How the hell do we let them go? You think they’re not going to notice two of their buddies have disappeared?”
“Well… we don’t actually know what Leonard’s men are going to do with the bodyguard. Did you tell them not to kill him? Has Blake updated you?”
“Not yet… which… is kind of concerning.”
“You did tell him what was happening, right?”
“I told him to send Antonio’s bodyguard in alone, so they should have dealt with him,” Ned says. “They assured me they’d lock him in some room or some shit.”
“Yes, but you… told Blake everything? Not just to send the bodyguard in alone?”
The silence tells me that he didn’t tell Grayson anything, but why? Why would you send your own man in with no information? “I didn’t know this was happening until he was in the car with them. I didn’t want one of them to overhear.”
“You could have texted him.”
“What if they saw? It’s fine. I explained it to Leonard.”
What the fuck is even happening? Are these guys just really fucking bad criminals… or are they simply inexperienced? But why? Why are they doing this, then? And why is Grayson helping them? And since I’m already asking questions, why does Ned have those photographs in the drawer?
His phone starts ringing and there’s a few seconds of silence.
“Are you going to answer it or just stare at it?” Emma asks. “Put it on speaker.”
“I can’t stand his voice!” Ned slams something down on his desk. “This is Ned.”
“Ned…” a man says.
When he doesn’t say anything more, Ned bites. It’s apparent the man is wanting to string him along and Ned is playing his game. “You got what you wanted.”
“Did I?” the man asks.
Ned hesitates, and my nosy ass really wishes I could see what’s going on. It’s so unfair that I can’t.
“I wasn’t there,” Ned says, voice cold. “But I told you the kid came with a bodyguard. Did your guys not deal with his guard?”
“I’m very pissed. And you don’t want to deal with me when I’m pissed. You trying to make a mockery of me? You trying to fuck with me? We’ve been over this, Ned. You want to keep your head, then you do what I fucking say.”
“You seem to think I can read minds and know what the fuck is going on,” Ned snarls.
“What’s going on is that my men were assaulted by people who took Elena’s son back from them.”
“Did your men not even tie him up or incapacitate him? Did they think his bodyguard was just going to sit there and watch you take him?”
“What’s even funnier is that they told me there wasn’t just one man but two who assaulted my men. And the second was your guy, Ned. You fucking with me? Do you think I’m a fucking joke?” he screams.
“Why the fuck would one of my men try to get Antonio back? I think you’re confused.”
The call ends and the room is quiet for a bit.
“Ned,” Emma says, sounding upset. “I think we need to stop. I know… I know we want answers. I know we want to feel like we’ve done something . But all we’re going to end up doing is wind up dead. What the fuck then? What have we accomplished if we all end up dead?”
And that’s the moment a huge crash sounds around me.